Yujun, Upon the Twentieth Floor
When Yujun stepped onto the twentieth floor, a host of Demon God Worshippers was waiting for him, every pair of eyes fixed on him with a fierce, glittering glare.
There was drive in those eyes, and fighting spirit—but their bodies were locked so rigid that the extremity of their tension showed through all the same.
Nothing but openings.
Every one of them was a high-level Demon God Worshipper who had received the Demon God's Grace. At that level a man had seen enough combat that tension rarely got a grip on him. Which only made it plain how deeply they feared Yujun, and how warily they were watching him.
"Who's in charge?"
"……"
Nobody answered.
Then he would simply have to find the man himself.
His gaze swept the crowd. One figure stood out at once: a man in spotless white clerical vestments, the formal dress of priests and seminarians. It was the sort of long robe one wore for a rite, and there was not a speck of dirt on it.
"You people wearing clothes like that—isn't that a little shameless? You'd still come up short dressed head to toe in black."
At that, the man in the vestments opened his mouth. Bishop Gadura.
"A peculiar prejudice. Do you sort white and black into good and evil?"
"Yeah. The energy pouring off you is pitch-black. And you stink."
There was, in fact, no smell. He had said it only to sour the man's mood, and it landed cleanly. Gadura's face twisted, just a fraction. Cleanliness was the sorest point he had, and Yujun had put a finger straight on it. The bishop was obsessive about hygiene and loathed the mere thought of filth touching him, which was why he went about under a shield at all times. And now someone was telling him he smelled?
"Lined up and waiting for me on the twentieth floor like this, I'd say you've prepared something."
Gadura said nothing. He only gestured to the Demon God Worshippers, and at that signal hundreds out of the thousands broke from the mass and charged.
The floor of the Tower was broad enough that even hundreds moving at once never felt cramped. Yujun faced that many strong fighters with an easy smile and lifted his sword.
From behind, dozens of spells came in—then hundreds—while the Worshippers closing for melee sealed every path of retreat. They meant to leave him nowhere to dodge.
He had no intention of dodging. He simply stood where he was and raised a Sword Barrier.
A Sword Barrier cast after his Swordsmanship had climbed to a ridiculous height. It had been a long time since he last used the skill, but its performance was, as ever, beyond question. Freezing magic, flame, lightning, a blade-edged storm—whatever came, the barrier stopped it. Even the wind could not pass.
The Demon God Worshippers stared as if their souls had left them. A solid mass, that they could understand being blocked. But was there truly not a single gap in that veil? Then it was no different from a shield of infinite defense, one that could never be pierced.
"If we're going to deal with Shin Yujun, we have to do something about that weapon first."
"You sure?"
"Have you forgotten what he does with a sword? Take that blade away and Shin Yujun is only half of what he is."
"So? How are you planning to cut him down to half?"
"A few of the order have Weapon Break. Make an opening so they can use it."
"……So you're telling us to die."
"……"
They were trying, in their own way, to find an answer. For the moment, though, there was nothing they could do about the Sword Barrier.
Yujun advanced at a walk, the barrier still held before him. The Demon God Worshippers had no choice but to give ground. What would happen if that all-stopping veil of the sword so much as touched a body? The thought alone was sickening.
Falling back, however, was not the same as being able to flee forever. However wide the Tower might be, the players crammed into this place were many, and the room in which one could run was correspondingly small.
Little by little, Yujun quickened. As the mana he fed the skill increased, the Sword Barrier began to swell.
"A-are you insane!"
"Block it with shields!"
Unwilling to simply take the blow, the Worshippers hurled every kind of magic they had. It did nothing, of course. Sword Barrier was a skill especially sensitive to the Swordsmanship trait. Its own rank was already high, and on top of that he had gained enlightenment in Swordsmanship—so closely bound to the skill—again and again. Its power was no longer in the same realm as before, and the mana it drank had fallen sharply as well.
Then Yujun's body shot forward. He closed on them at a speed like instantaneous movement, as if he had used Flash, and they were crushed by the Sword Barrier without managing the slightest resistance.
It was a thoroughly brutal sight. Yujun hardened his heart and kept running. Even as he sprinted with the barrier spread before him, the tip of his sword did not tremble by so much as a hair.
Holding a Sword Barrier for long was supposed to pile damage into the body until the skill canceled outright, or at least until its completeness began to fray. Yujun was different. His barrier remained as perfect as the moment he had first raised it—less because of his understanding of Swordsmanship than because of Barbarism, which had driven the durability of his flesh up to an absurd degree. For a skill in which the strength of the wrist mattered so much, Barbarism's influence was enormous.
Not a single Demon God Worshipper could stop him once Barbarism was in play.
Krrrrk—!
A giant of a man, well over ten feet tall, stepped out and planted himself in Yujun's path. He meant only to buy a little time. He delayed the advance by a single second. The giant was ground apart against the Sword Barrier where he stood, his flesh shredded fine and scattered in every direction.
The Worshippers who witnessed that nauseating sight went pale to the bone.
"What kind of monster is he……"
"What is the Bishop doing?"
"It isn't the time he named yet. We have to hold a little longer."
"Half of us are going to die out here……"
While the Demon God Worshippers bought time, Bishop Gadura prepared, from the farthest reach of the floor, a sorcery that demanded a terrible price.
A sorcery that bestowed evil.
It was a power of an entirely different order from magic, and for that very reason he believed Shin Yujun would have no resistance to it. He was right. Yujun had almost never encountered sorcery at all.
Gadura flung both arms high. The sorcery was complete. Rare herbs and poisonous plants beyond counting had been offered up, along with a child's blood and the heart of a player who bore the epithet Bloodfiend—a man who had gone about killing players for the pleasure of it.
That nickname had not been earned by stringing victories together against the strong. It had stuck because he sought out only the weak, people whose strength was so low they could barely be called players, who struggled just to earn a day's meal, and killed them. For a player, it was a thing to be ashamed of: taking pleasure in slaughter itself.
For a sorcery that bestows evil, the one material you cannot do without is the heart of vermin like that Bloodfiend.
He had not laid the heart aside in anticipation of this man's coming. Even so, it was the only method that could bring him down.
Will I live through today?
Bestowing evil on Shin Yujun was the greater problem that came after. It would only plant ferocity in him and set him rampaging harder, and the chance of survival would drop to something abysmal. Those who received the bestowal had their temperaments violently warped, and in exchange their senses grew sharper. Fleeing him would be all but impossible.
Gadura—head of the diocese, Floor Lord, and bishop—had already resigned himself to death as he watched, from far away, Yujun massacring the faithful behind his Sword Barrier.
The target had been set long ago. The instant Yujun set foot on the twentieth floor, the conditions for the sorcery's activation had already been fulfilled.
"Heh heh……"
If Shin Yujun, the cult's greatest obstacle, received the bestowal of evil, what he did afterward was more likely to help the cult than harm it. His intelligence would fall considerably, and he would no longer be able to tell ally from enemy. Anything living that entered his sight, he would try to kill—celestial, demon, or human like himself. He might even start with the two mages who traveled at his side. If it came to that, one could call it the best possible scenario.
So long as the cult went on working in secret, as it did now, it would not loom large in Shin Yujun's eyes. And once evil was bestowed he would all but lose his reason, spending his strength without reserve until, at some moment, he exhausted himself and died an empty death to a blind blow.
Gadura did not imagine the man would die easily. Shin Yujun possessed a might that would not shame the title of the strongest player in the history of the Continent. He had no weakness. Even their cult acknowledged that he was a player close to perfection.
At first they had thought there would be a limit to him, since he formed no organization and went about alone, or in a party of three at most. But he was not a man who could be contained by phrases like one against a hundred, or one against a thousand. How many players would have to be spent to catch him……
That was not the cult's concern. Once they had made a villain of him, they would hold to a thorough indifference. Left alone, he would destroy himself. There was no need to go stirring the hive.
I've already sent word to the Cardinal…… All that's left is to run for my life.
Gadura's sorcery struck Yujun.
Bestowal of Evil
A formless sorcery passed the Sword Barrier and took hold of Shin Yujun.
Target locked the moment he set foot on the twentieth floor.
The Sword Barrier could not stop a sorcery that had no form. A shield might have kept it from taking hold, but the Sword Barrier was not a defensive wall made of magic, and the sorcery slipped through with ease.
Pierced by that formless energy, Yujun stopped. Gadura, watching, smiled the smile of a man whose gamble had paid.
No matter how you soar and thrash, you will never resist the bestowal of evil.
It was the single sorcery he had researched across decades—a power prepared for the day an unmanageable powerhouse appeared, a Hero by the measure of the Continent's players. In a sense, one could say he had possessed foresight. Not every bishop looked as far ahead as he did. Even the Cult Saintess herself had failed to foresee Shin Yujun, which was why they had been taking this beating, helpless, until now. Shin Yujun was a being to whom the word Irregular fit with uncomfortable precision.
The bestowal succeeded. Once I'm dead, I ought to receive a reward from the Saintess.
If his honor within the cult rose higher still, he would have no regrets in dying.
The Demon God Worshippers who had braced themselves to face Yujun were thrown into confusion. He had stopped dead. The Sword Barrier had vanished with him.
"I-is this our chance?"
"It could be a trap."
"No. I think this is the Bishop's doing."
"Why would that bastard bother tricking us? He could kill us anyway."
"Attack!"
"All-out assault!"
The bishop cried the order out, and then Gadura was already dropping toward the lower floors at speed.
A tremendous explosion hammered his ears.
No time.
A ward laid over the whole of the Tower made even Blink impossible, so he had to run the descent on his own feet. He was a mage, but his body was not a weak one. Gadura raced all the way down to the tenth floor, flung aside even the things he absolutely ought to have taken, and ran at full speed.
And then—
"What……!"
Yujun was already right in front of his eyes. Gadura froze like a statue, too shocked to move. He had expected to be pursued. He had not expected this. It was fast—far too fast. Had the man already cut down that many of the faithful and come all this way? Or had he come first for the one who cast the sorcery, to kill the caster before anyone else?
Gadura, who had prepared himself for death, felt a smile pull at his mouth instead.
"Kuhk. Useless. Kill me and nothing changes."
"I wouldn't say nothing changes."
At the sight of him speaking so clearly, each word set neatly in place, Gadura's eyes went wide. The moment one received the bestowal of evil, one was supposed to lose all reason…… And yet, astonishingly, the light in those eyes was still alive.